Intel snaps up Wind River, looks for that embedded systems edge

Wind River Systems has been doing Android up right for quite some time, and evidently Intel is sick and tired of sitting on the outside looking in. Disregarding that massive EU fine for a moment, the company somehow managed to find time to pen a check in the amount of $884 million in order to fully acquire the aforesaid embedded systems company. The reason? Intel knows the CPU business is morphing into something entirely more elaborate, and it reckons a solid presence in the embedded devices segment (MIDs, UMPCs, etc.) is necessary to keep those profits up in the future. Honestly, such a pickup isn't really a shock; Intel has shown great interest in being a serious player in the handheld computing market, and its fledgling CE 3100 media processor could also benefit from a respectable layer of software behind it. Meanwhile, something tells us those Wind River guys are gearing up for the weekend of their lives.